This blog exists purely as a place for me to dump random links and thoughts I have rather than emailing them to my friends. It'll have large amounts of inside jokes. Also there will probably be times when I write "you" or refer to an email. Just pretend that you are reading an email to you. If you don't know me you likely won't find anything here interesting. If you do know me you also will not find anything here interesting.

Saturday, October 1, 2016

Body Cameras Are Betraying Their Promise

In case after case, police departments say officers did not have
their body cameras activated when it counted. It can seem as though
incidents where body-cam footage helped secure an indictment—such as in Marksville, Louisiana, last November, or as in Cincinnati last July—are more rare than the cases where they don’t.

These
are breaches of protocol—incidents where events didn’t happen as the
law would require. Often, these violations are never significantly
punished. This is the second major threat to body-camera accountability:
If there’s not significant discipline for officers who fail to follow
local policies—as the officers failed in D.C., Chicago, and
Charlotte—then it doesn’t matter what’s in the policy.